Sarah Kaufman: No nerves for Ronda Rousey armbar ahead of Strikeforce title fight

Sarah Kaufman has a pretty good idea of how Ronda Rousey would like their Saturday fight to go.

Including three amateur fights, Rousey (5-0 MMA, 3-0 SF) has finished all eight of her MMA opponents with first-round armbars. That little bit of MMA math (Rousey + Fight = 100 percent armbar finish) is one of the sport’s easiest equations.

It’s certainly not lost on Kaufman (15-1 MMA, 6-1 SF). But she has a way around what has arguably become the most feared finish in the sport these days – just snap the streak.

Kaufman, a former champion, challenges Rousey for her Strikeforce bantamweight title in the main event of “Strikeforce: Rousey vs. Kaufman,” which takes place Saturday at Valley View Casino Center in San Diego. The main card airs on Showtime at 10 p.m. ET. Prelims air on Showtime Extreme at 8 p.m.

“I don’t think that it’s unstoppable,” Kaufman said of Rousey’s armbar on a recent call with media members. “… It doesn’t make me nervous. It’s something that could happen. It’s also something that I’m prepared for. It’s an armbar and people can have a mystique behind someone because they’ve had the same submission over and over and over again. And it does create kind of an aura of, ‘Whoa, she’s won every fight by the same thing.’ I did the same thing when I had eight knockouts in a row.

“You do have that mystique, and someone has to break it – and that’s what I’m prepared to do.”

Kaufman has won three straight after tapping out, ironically, to an armbar against Marloes Coenen in October 2010. In that fight, Coenen submitted her in the third round to take her title. Coenen eventually would lose the belt to Miesha Tate, who surrendered it to Rousey in March.

This title shot is one Kaufman, from Canada, believes she should have had in March against Tate instead of Rousey. She said at the time she believed Rousey talked her way into the title shot by making some controversy and helping stir the public pot that it was a fight between two good-looking women.

But if Rousey was big in March, she’s enormous now. She’s been on the cover of ESPN The Magazine in “The Body Issue,” she’s been a guest of Conan O’Brien, Showtime’s done an “All Access” special on her and UFC and Zuffa President Dana White has worn a t-shirt with her likeness on it at a televised UFC weigh-in event.

Kaufman doesn’t believe all the extra attention will have kept Rousey, a bronze medal-winning Olympian in judo, from being able to train properly for the fight – even if she believes she’ll have trained harder.

“A lot of people are sending messages saying Ronda’s so busy doing so many other things,” Kaufman said. “But Ronda is an athlete. You don’t get to be a world champion and a medalist at the Olympics from sitting back and just enjoying things. So, I really believe that Ronda’s been training hard.

“I’ve been training just as hard, and that’s really all that I care about. The fight’s going to really show who’s been training the most.”

Kaufman’s version of “training the most” includes plenty of armbar submission defense. But she also believes Rousey has been training for her strength in the standup game, just as she’s been training for Rousey to come with anything.

“I think Ronda has had time to work on her striking, and I have no illusions that that’s probably been a focus and I probably have no illusions that she’s going – or that I’m going – to be untouchable in terms of her striking,” Kaufman said. “I really train as an all-around fighter and I’m really training as if she is a good striker, as if she is a good judo player, as if she is a destructive person on the ground. Because I want to be prepared for the best, not assume that she’s kind of lower in that level.”

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